Ukaleq Slettemark is used to the stress of competing on the world stage as she tries to qualify for the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. But the 25-year-old biathlete from Greenland is facing an extra level of anxiety as U.S. President Donald Trump keeps saying he wants to take over her country.
“It’s terrifying," Slettemark told The Associated Press on Wednesday from Ruhpolding, Germany, where she and her brother, Sondre, are competing in the biathlon World Cup. “We are imagining the worst-case scenario and my aunt is having trouble sleeping at night. My mom, yesterday, she broke down at the stadium crying because she’s so afraid.”
The Slettemark siblings compete for Greenland in the World Cup, but if they qualify for the Olympics — they will find out next week — they will represent Denmark, because Greenland is not a sovereign nation with its own national Olympic committee.
While stressing that she is an athlete, not politician, Slettemark said the threats from the U.S. are impossible to ignore. It's taking an extra effort to focus on training and competitions as she worries about what's happening back at home.
“People are talking about maybe they have to leave Greenland because they feel it’s so unsafe,” she said. "So we are terrified and we are really angry because this is not how you talk to another country, this is not how you talk to your allies. And we feel so disrespected and very scared.”
Trump reiterated his intention to take over Greenland on Wednesday, saying on social media that the U.S. “needs Greenland for the purpose of National Security.” His post came ahead of a meeting between Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart Vivian Motzfeldt.
Greenland is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO ally.
Slettemark, who competed for Denmark in the 2022 Winter Olympics, was born in Nuuk, Greenland's capital. Both her parents are biathletes: her father, Øystein Slettemark, competed in the 2010 Winter Olympics in biathlon and her mother, Uiloq, founded the Greenland Biathlon Federation. The sport combines cross-country skiing with rifle shooting.
The U.S. threats follow her every day as other athletes ask how she is holding up. Slettemark said she has no hard feelings against the members of the U.S. team.
“I’m very good friends with the U.S. athletes," she said. “I think they’re all really nice people.”
Slettemark said she hopes Americans will pressure Congress to put a stop to the Greenland takeover plan, which she likened to Russian President Vladimir Putin's aggression in Ukraine.
Russia was banned from competing in the Olympics after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine — and Slettemark said she's overheard people on the biathlon circuit say the same should happen to the U.S. if it forcefully took over Greenland.
“I've definitely thought so myself, but we’re not at that stage right now, because nothing has happened yet,” she said. “But if it were to happen, then I would also agree that that would be the right way to do it.”
AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
FILE - Ukaleq Astri Slettemark, of Greenland, competes in the Women 15 km Individual event at the Biathlon World Championships in Oberhof, Germany, Feb. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, File)
FILE - Ukaleq Astri Slettemark of Denmark skis during the women's 7.5-kilometer sprint competition at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 11, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate is headed toward a vote Wednesday on a war powers resolution that would put a check on President Donald Trump's ability to carry out further military attacks on Venezuela, but the president was putting intense pressure on his fellow Republicans to vote down the measure.
Trump has lashed out at five GOP senators who joined with Democrats to advance the resolution last week, raising doubts that the measure will ultimately pass. Yet even the possibility that the Republican-controlled Senate would defy Trump on such a high-profile vote revealed the growing alarm on Capitol Hill about the president's expanding foreign policy ambitions.
Democrats are forcing the vote after U.S. troops captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid earlier this month.
“Here we have one of the most successful attacks ever and they find a way to be against it. It’s pretty amazing. And it’s a shame," Trump said at a speech in Michigan Tuesday. He also hurled insults at several of the Republicans who advanced the legislation, calling Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky a “stone cold loser” and Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine “disasters.”
Trump's latest comments followed earlier phone calls with the senators, which they described as terse. The president's fury underscored how the war powers vote has taken on new political significance as Trump also threatens military action to accomplish his goal of possessing Greenland.
The legislation, even if passed by the Senate, has virtually no chance of becoming law because it would eventually need to be signed by Trump himself. But it represented both a test of GOP loyalty to the president and a marker for how much leeway the Republican-controlled Senate is willing to give Trump to use the military abroad.
Republican Senate leaders are trying to defuse the conflict between their members and Trump as well as move on quickly to other business.
In a floor speech Wednesday morning, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., vented his frustration as he questioned whether this war powers resolution should be prioritized under the chamber’s rules.
“We have no troops on the ground in Venezuela. We’re not currently conducting military operations there,” he said. “But Democrats are taking up this bill because their anti-Trump hysteria knows no bounds.”
By Wednesday evening, Republican leaders were moving to dismiss the measure under the argument that it is irrelevant to the current situation in Venezuela. That procedure will still receive a vote.
Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who helped advance the war powers resolution last week, has indicated he may change his position.
Hawley said that Trump's message during a phone call last week was that the legislation “really ties my hands." The senator said he had a follow-up phone call with Secretary of State Marco Rubio that was “really positive.”
Hawley said that Rubio told him Monday "point blank, we’re not going to do ground troops.” The senator said he also received assurances that the Trump administration will follow constitutional requirements if it becomes necessary to deploy troops again to the South American country.
“We’re getting along very well with Venezuela,” Trump told reporters at a ceremony for the signing of an unrelated bill Wednesday.
Hawley's position left the vote margin for the resolution, which advanced 52-47 last week, razor thin.
However, Collins told reporters Wednesday she will still support the resolution. Murkowski and Paul have also indicated they won't switch.
That left Sen. Todd Young, an Indiana Republican, with the crucial vote. He declined repeatedly to discuss his position but said he was “giving it some thought.”
Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who has brought a series of war powers resolutions this year, said he wasn't surprised at Trump's reaction to senators asserting their ability to put a check on the president.
“They're furious at the notion that Congress wants to be Congress,” he said. “But I think people who ran for the Senate, they want to be U.S. senators and they don't want to just vote their own irrelevance.”
Under the Constitution, Congress alone has the ability to declare war. But U.S. presidents have long stretched their powers to use the might of the U.S. military around the globe.
Ohio State University professor Peter Mansoor, a military historian and retired U.S. Army colonel with multiple combat tours, said that trend since World War II allows Congress to shirk responsibility for war and put all the risk on the president.
In the post-Vietnam War era, lawmakers tried to take back some of their authority over wartime powers with the War Powers Resolution of 1973. It allows lawmakers to hold votes on resolutions to restrict a president from using military force in specific conflicts without congressional approval.
“Politicians tend to like to evade responsibility for anything -- but then this gets you into forever wars,” Mansoor said.
Trump has used a series of legal arguments for his campaign against Maduro.
As he built up a naval force in the Caribbean and destroyed vessels that were allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, the Trump administration tapped wartime powers under the global war on terror by designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations.
The administration has claimed the capture of Maduro himself was actually a law enforcement operation, essentially to extradite the Venezuelan president to stand trial for charges in the U.S. that were filed in 2020.
In a classified briefing Tuesday, senators reviewed the Trump administration's still undisclosed legal opinion for using the military for the operation. It was described as a lengthy document.
But lawmakers, including a significant number of Republicans, have been alarmed by Trump's recent foreign policy talk. In recent weeks, he has pledged that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela for years to come, threatened military action to take possession of Greenland and told Iranians protesting their government that “ help is on its way.”
Senior Republicans have tried to massage the relationship between Trump and Denmark, a NATO ally that holds Greenland as a semi-autonomous territory. But Danish officials emerged from a meeting with Vice President JD Vance and Rubio Wednesday saying a “fundamental disagreement” over Greenland remains.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Trump's recent aggression amounted to a “dangerous drift towards endless war.”
More than half of U.S. adults believe President Donald Trump has “gone too far” in using the U.S. military to intervene in other countries, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
House Democrats have also filed a similar war powers resolution and can force a vote on it as soon as next week.
Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Joey Cappelletti in Washington and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with oil executives in the East Room of the White House, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., talks with reporters outside the Senate chamber during a vote at the Capitol, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., speaks with reporters at the Senate Subway on Capitol Hill, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., speaks during a news conference at the Capitol, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
